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Sunday, September 29, 2013

I need to make two qualifications to this review. Firstly, I haven’t read any of the previous
three Burton & Swinburne novels.
This may have left me at a disadvantage.
Knowing that there had been three previous adventures in the series
meant that I was thrown slightly by Burton apparently meeting Swinburne for the
first time in what is the fourth in the series.
I also suspect that The Secret of
Abdu El-Yezdi is much better read as a continuation of the series than as a
stand-alone novel – in fact, I have a nagging feeling that I may have missed
all sorts of points.

Secondly, I’m not much of a steampunk fan. I love Michael Moorcock and his forays into
the genre but, although steampunk should, in theory, appeal to my tastes, in
practice I’ve found it difficult to get into.
Again, this may be because I’ve been trying the wrong books or because
my expectations of the genre are too great but I came to The Secret of Abdu El-Yezdi with an odd mixture of hope and
apprehension.

The backdrop to The
Secret of Abdu El-Yezdi is an alternate Victorian England in which, inter
alia, Queen Victoria was assassinated in 1840, Germany became unified in the
1850s (rather than following the Franco-Prussian war), Richard Burton received the
credit he was due for having discovered the source of the Nile (with Speke
dying and not beating him back to England) and technological marvels such as
airships, rotorchairs and primitive computers and robots are part of life.

The Secret of Abdu
El-Yezdi opens with Burton returning by airship from Africa suffering from
malaria and a kind of breakdown as well as having to deal with the ritualistic
murder of one of his companions. Once
back in London, he is knighted, reunited with his fiancée, Isabelle, and
appointed king’s agent (with Victoria having been assassinated, George V is the
reigning monarch). A number of prominent
scientists and other personages including Charles Babbage and Florence
Nightingale have disappeared and Burton’s mission is to find out what has
happened to them. He is also made party
to the stunning secret that, since Victoria’s death, the British government has
been receiving advice from a spirit, Abdu El-Yezdi, who has masterminded
Britain’s renaissance and is working to bring about a rapprochement between
Britain and Germany. Unfortunately, Abdu
El-Yezdi has disappeared too, adding another complexity to Burton’s mission.

Revealing any more of the plot would almost certainly risk
detracting from one’s enjoyment of the book, save to say that a complicated
plot unwinds thereafter culminating in some heavy action and a major twist at
the end.

Hodder crams his story full of literary allusions including
references to Sherlock Holmes, Frankenstein and Dracula. The latter in particular is almost a sub-text
in itself, with a young Bram Stoker appearing as Burton’s valet and the plot
itself involving a nosferatu (a type of vampire) in a foreshadowing of the yet
to be written Dracula.

Similarly, The Secret
of Abdu El-Yezdi is a grab-bag of 19th Century historical
figures, both major and minor. As many
of them are portrayed differently from their real characters, Hodder provides a
handy and lengthy dramatis personae section at the end. I’d advise leaving this to the end rather
than dipping into as the book progresses to avoid spoiling the surprises.

As all this may be suggesting, Hodder’s greatest strength
lies in his intricate world-building and playful subversion of history. His Victorian London has a real steampunk vibe
and combines more or less accurate historical nuggets with manipulations of
other events, both in fact and time.
This is where my lack of familiarity of his previous Burton & Swinburne
novels may have limited my enjoyment of The
Secret of Abdu El-Yezdi as I had a sense that many of the events referenced
back to the earlier books – references I clearly didn’t get.

Unfortunately, the book is so heavily driven by the plot (and
Hodder’s numerous sub-plots, which were well-organised and didn’t confuse the
main storyline) and the world-building that the characterisations and writing
style have been neglected. Although the
contrasts in Burton and Swinburne’s personalities made for an interesting
relationship, the characters in general were a little flat and, in particular,
the few female characters seemed curiously formless. Likewise, the writing style was a little
lifeless and functioned only to move the plot forward. Fortunately, the plot and Hodder’s world are
interesting enough for this not to matter too much.

I found The Secret of
Abdu El-Yezdi quite difficult to get into, which may be the result of my
ambivalent attitude to steampunk, and I almost gave up after the first
third. I’m glad I persevered though as
the pace picked up, I got my head round the timeline and it just got a whole
lot better.

If you are a fan of Hodder’s other books, I’m sure you’ll
love this, as will steampunk fans, Victorian history and literature lovers and
aficionados of the esoteric. I’m not
sure others will appreciate it so much and I’d very much recommend having read
the first three of the series before this one.

Thank you to the publishers, Ebury, for allowing me to read The Secret of Abdu El-Yezdi through
Netgalley.

Friday, September 20, 2013

I was pretty much pre-disposed to enjoy
Giorgio Faletti’s The Pimp (A Pimp’s Notes in America) as soon as I
read the opening line and I’m glad to say that my pre-disposition was borne out
by what followed.

Giorgio Faletti is a well-known Italian
comedian and actor who has also written seven novels, of which four have been
translated into English. The Pimp, the most recent of these four,
is set in Milan in the late 1970s, at the same time as the kidnapping of the former
Italian Prime Minister, Aldo Moro, the period when Faletti was a regular at the
Derby, a leading Milan cabaret.

The titular character, Bravo, is indeed a
man who makes his living from procuring women for his clients. He took up his less than salubrious
profession after his own manhood was sliced off with a razor by the minions of
a Mafia boss whose girlfriend Bravo had foolishly slept with. His life is relatively straightforward, if
sleazy and soul-deadening, until a party for which he has supplied the female
company is targeted by assassins who murder all those present. From that moment, Bravo finds himself at the
centre of a complex plot that results in him being hunted by the Red Brigades,
the police and the Mafia.

The story is told from Bravo’s perspective
and in a kind of Euro-Chandleresque voice, combining noir with a penchant for
world-weary semi-philosophising, all of which works well unless you pause a
moment too long to ponder the meaning of some of his sayings. Fortunately, the plot is engaging,
satisfyingly complex and carries the reader forward.

Having said that the plot is complex, it is
important to point out that this does not mean convoluted; Faletti creates a
spider’s web of seemingly unconnected facts and happenings and manages to weave
them together in a way that both maintains the suspense whilst being very clear
in its workings. There isn’t a moment
where you feel confused as to what’s happening but, equally, the pay-off of the
denouement is worth it. Faletti’s other
real knack is of planting small and seemingly unimportant nuggets in the
narrative that end up becoming surprisingly significant, often in unexpected
ways, which adds an extra layer to the enjoyability of The Pimp.

The ending of The Pimp has a little too much neat coincidence for my personal
taste but there is much to admire in this book, including a surprisingly emotional
and reflective undercurrent in Bravo’s character. Ultimately, The Pimp is a superior thriller,
blending a noir feel and a demi-monde setting with Italian politics.

I’d like to thank Constable & Robinson
(whose crime list is absolutely first-rate) for sending me a copy of The Pimp for review.

Monday, September 16, 2013

For the British (and, possibly, American)
reader, there’s a section in Armageddon,
Max Hastings’ masterful account of the last year or so of WW2 in Europe, where
the author contemptuously dismisses the military qualities of almost all of the
leading British and American generals of the time. Indeed, pretty much only Eisenhower, Montgomery
and Patton emerge with even faint praise, although even this is tempered with
much criticism. Counterpointed with his
comments on the superiority of the German armed forces, it comes as no surprise
that Hastings points to the Red Army as the real victors of the land war in
Europe. In summary, he believes that the
Soviets supplied the blood, the Americans the equipment and the British contribution
was to hold out in 1940.

Given all of this, and that for most of the
War, Georgy Zhukov was the Soviet Union’s leading professional soldier, it is
arguable that Zhukov was the general most responsible for the ultimate defeat
of Germany in 1945. Present at pretty
much all of the most significant battles on the Eastern Front (including the siege
of Leningrad and the battles of Moscow, Stalingrad and Kursk), Zhukov’s forces
won the race to Berlin and it was troops under his command who placed the red
flag atop the Reichstag building. Named
Deputy Supreme Commander, Stalin permitted Zhukov the honour of taking the
victory parade in Red Square, sitting astride a white charger.

And yet, within a year of this zenith, he
was in disgrace and banished by Stalin to a military backwater until Stalin’s
death and his rehabilitation by Khruschev which culminated in his appointment
as Minister for Defence, followed almost inevitably by further disgrace and
dismissal. Suffering the reputational
trashing that followed, Zhukov lapsed into obscurity until the replacement of
Khruschev by Brezhnev gave him the opportunity to reclaim his reputation and to
write a self-serving autobiography before dying in 1974. Since then, his iconic status has remained untouched
and, in 1995, a statue of Zhukov on the famous white stallion was erected in
Red Square itself.

In totalitarian regimes such as the old
Soviet Union, history becomes a political tool of the regime and it can be
difficult to know where truth lies. This
is doubly so in Zhukov’s case with his rises and falls from grace and his sometimes
unreliable memoirs.

It is, therefore, welcome that Geoffrey
Roberts, given access to previously unpublished Russian archive material, has
written a new biography, seeking to readdress Zhukov’s position in Soviet
history and to give a more accurate portrayal of the man.

In many ways, Zhukov was a prototypical
Soviet success story, the child of a proletarian family who climbed to the very
top of Soviet society through a mixture of talent, hard work, luck and
political reliability. A dedicated
communist, he was a brilliant offensive general, skilled in the use of deception
as a tactic and Stalin’s favourite general, given a latitude not extended to
other generals and used almost as a troubleshooter, being sent off to any major
situation.

The flip side was that he was arrogant and
keen to make certain that he received full credit for his successes - traits
that led directly to both his falls from grace and ensured that there was no
shortage of rivals and colleagues ready to criticise him and trample on his
reputation at the right time.

Zhukov could also be fairly accused of
taking a cavalier attitude towards the lives of the men under his command and
of only being concerned with body counts to the extent they impacted on the
effectiveness of his forces. He could
also be a bully and appeared to take a tolerant view of the campaign of rape
that the Red Army waged across Germany in 1945.
Another criticism is that his impact on Soviet military doctrine and
theory was limited - a criticism I find slightly unfair. After all, the mark of a wartime general lies
in his victories and, in this, Zhukov was unsurpassed in WW2 and ranks
alongside any Russian or Soviet military leader of any period.

Roberts does not shy away from these
criticisms and also exposes the lies and exaggerations that Zhukov makes in his
memoirs in defence of his reputation.
Yet, despite his stated intention of writing a critical biography, it is
clear that Roberts is positively disposed to Zhukov and, where differences of
opinion arise, tends to give Zhukov the benefit of the doubt. One should not forget, however, that Zhukov
for all his positive qualities and his relative independence from Stalin was a
committed communist and follower of Stalin whose last action as a military
leader was to mastermind the uncompromising suppression of the Hungarian
Revolution of 1956.

Stalin’s
General does an excellent job of retelling Zhukov’s
life story and setting it in its true historical context. Roberts also succeeds in reconciling the competing
claims for credit made by leading figures such as Stalin, Khruschev, Konev and
Rokossovsky.

What it doesn’t quiet manage to do,
however, is to give much insight into the personal life or the mind of
Zhukov. Roberts does make some attempt
to do this and we do learn about his somewhat complicated love life - four
children, two wives and a long term lover - but at the end, he is still
something of a mystery as a human being.
Given the exigencies of Soviet politics and history and the
inadvisability of writing down unedited thoughts, it is, of course, possible
that Roberts has done as much as will ever be possible along these lines.

Roberts rates Zhukov as top of a kind of
military geeky league table of Soviet and Russian generals and, whilst it is
probably impossible to make definitive judgements across time, it is certain
that, in Zhukov’s sometimes brutal but effective manner, the Soviet Union got
the general it needed to win the long drawn out existential battle that was the
Eastern Front.

Stalin’s
General is an interesting and necessary biography
of one of the most significant figures of WW2 and a “must read” to anyone
interested in this period or, more generally, in Russian history. Whether it becomes the definitive biography
probably depends upon whether there is any as-yet undiscovered archival
material out there that could shed more light on the inner Zhukov.

I’d like to thank Random House for allowing
me to read this via Netgalley.

Thursday, September 12, 2013

It’s been billed as “the only thriller you need to read
this year” and, ignoring the issue of where the emphasis should rest in that statement,
it’s a pretty big and ballsy claim, especially when backed up with a big publicity
campaign and some pretty decent word of mouth.
So, does I Am Pilgrim live up
to it.

Well, not quite, although that’s not to say that it isn’t
a good read. It’s just that it’s not so
much better than other thrillers I’ve read this year that it quite warrants the
hyperbole.

I don’t particularly want to say a huge amount about the
plot as, firstly, it’s pretty convoluted and so any synopsis will either not do
it justice or will be too confusing to be of any value. Secondly, I did like the way the author
develops the plot from a really skilful opening scene onwards - although
certain passages of the book can appear a bit standard thrillerish, the overall
story arc is not so predictable.

So, I’ll just restrict myself to saying that the book
opens in a down-market New York hotel room where the NYPD have discovered a
young woman gruesomely murdered and disposed of in a bath of acid. All forensic evidence in the room has been
removed or destroyed. It looks like the
perfect murder, a fact that disturbs a civilian observer of the scene. Why? Because
he has, quite literally, written the book on how to commit the perfect murder.

Intrigued? Well,
from this beginning the reader is taken on a breakneck-paced journey which
takes in three continents, several more countries, over thirty years of history
and at least three sub-plots, all whilst jumping from action scene to
puzzle-solving and from the hero’s point of view to the villain’s perspective
stuff. It’s heady, adrenaline-pumping
stuff and, given that the book runs to around 700 pages, it’s credit to the
author that it never drags or sags.

The author, Terry Hayes, is actually a Hollywood
screenwriter (I Am Pilgrim is his
debut novel) so it probably shouldn’t be a surprise that his command of action
is so good or that I Am Pilgrim has
an action film flavour to it as his credits include Mad Max 2 and Payback.

Although Hayes occasionally dips into the bag of thriller
clichés - there are a few stock thriller character types and
some of the main characters are given butch sounding nicknames - on the whole
the plotting and the characters are believable and capable of holding the
reader’s attention. I would point out
that the ethical systems and decision-making of some of the main characters
including, notably, Pilgrim himself, the book’s hero, inhabit the grey areas of
life and some readers who prefer a less utilitarian outlook from their action
heroes may find Pilgrim unsympathetic.

Personally, after getting used to it, I found Pilgrim’s
way of thinking rather refreshing, especially as it came as part of a conflicted
and morally troubled character package that made him a more original and
interesting protagonist and the ways in which Pilgrim and his antagonist,
Saracen, had developed from their troubled childhoods formed a nice contrast
and sub-theme.

I’m not sure if there’s a particular message to be gleaned
from I Am Pilgrim but there seemed to
be a clear undertone that America has a right to deal with its perceived
enemies in whatever way it thinks fit which might have been offputting had it
not been for the fact that it also seemed to be pointing at Pilgrim and saying,”
and this is what can happen to those caught up in our fight against our
enemies.”

Look, the bottom line with I Am Pilgrim is that it’s a high octane thriller with an excellent
plot, some well-developed characters and enough originality to lift it well
above most of its competitors. It had me
sitting up late at night and eating my lunch away from my desk as it was so gripping
and that’s got to be a good thing.

The only thriller you need to read this year? No, but it’s
definitely a thriller you should read this year.

I'd like to thank Transworld for allowing me to read I Am Pilgrim through Netgalley.

Sunday, September 8, 2013

There are two ironies in the very title of Anya von Bremzen’s
Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking. The first and more obvious irony is that, for
most Soviet citizens during much of the Soviet period, the culinary art that
needed to be mastered most was the art of obtaining food. The second irony, which can only be grasped
by anyone who reads this marvellous book, is that cooking is really just a thread
onto which she strings a family memoir and a history of the Soviet Union like
jewels on a necklace.

The book’s framework is the recreation by von Bremzen and
her mother, Larisa (the true hero of the book) of a representative meal from
each decade of the Soviet period, commencing with a celebratory end of era
Romanov meal. Onto this skeleton, she
then weaves the story of her extraordinary family together with a more general
history of the Soviet Union and a more detailed analysis of the food and
cooking of each decade.

I will confess that, with both food and Russian history
being particular interests of mine, von Bremzen would have struggled to lose my
interest but there was never any danger of that occurring given the quality of
her storytelling.

It helps that the two branches of her family contain a
wonderfully eclectic mix of characters from Larisa, who appears to have been a
natural born dissident to her grandfather Naum, a senior Soviet intelligence
officer throughout the Second World War (or Great Patriotic War as it’s known
in Russia) and from her father, Sergei, an unreliable spouse who at one time
was responsible for monitoring the colour of Lenin’s embalmed corpse to her
great great grandmother Anna Aleevna, a fiery idealist who fought for women’s
rights in Turkestan in the early days of the Soviet Union but who ended her
life broken and disowned in Siberia, having been sent to the gulag by Stalin.

Mastering the Art of
Soviet Cooking reads like a Tolstoyan family epic, sweeping across time and
geography and tracing out the lives of the vivid individuals who make and made
up the author’s extended family. Her
family story takes us from the Caucasus to the Ukraine to meet some of her Jewish
relatives and their heritage and from her various family homes in Moscow to the
siege of Leningrad in the Second World War.

There’s also something telescopic about the way that Von Bremzen
combines this panoramic story with intimate and detailed family stories such as
the story of how Larisa lost the ration book during the Second World War – an
event that usually spelt starvation and death for the family concerned – and learnt
how to deal in the black market or the incredible story of Naum’s narrow escape
from arrest during one of Stalin’s purges.

And as for the food, given that this is styled “a memoir of
food and longing”? Well, von Bremzen
makes it clear from the beginning that this is no trawl through high gastronomy
by pointing out, ““besides sosiski [Soviet hot dog sausages] with
canned peas and kotleti (minced meat patties) with kasha,
cabbage-intensive soups, mayo-laden salads, and watery fruit kompot for
desert—there wasn’t all that much to eat in the Land of the Soviets.”

Instead, the central food-related themes are those of the struggle
to obtain food: the rationing, the queuing, the failures of central planning,
the Krushchevian obsession with corn, the near starvation of the Yeltsin years
and the actual starvation in the Ukraine following collectivisation. It’s the impact of Soviet totalitarianism on even
the basic social structures of eating with the communal apartments and shared
kitchens and the public canteens.

I think that the use of food as the central thread by the author
is beautifully appropriate, given the importance that obtaining enough to eat
assumed for most Soviets. But von Bremzen
goes further, linking individual Soviet leaders to particular foodstuffs and
drawing from this parallels with their leadership. So, we have Stalin’s championing of Soviet “champagne”,
an ersatz product that was designed to demonstrate abundance and that Soviet
quality of life was high – when the reality was one of fear, shortage and lack
of quality. Khrushchev is, inevitably,
associated with corn and his failed attempt to use it as a miracle grain to
solve the problem of poor harvests. Like
Khrushchev himself, it was doomed to failure.

In many ways, food embodies some of the key historical
themes of the Soviet Union – from the brutal farm collectivisations and
requisitioning of Lenin’s times, to the rationing and hunger of the Second
World War and from the failures of the Khruschev years to provide the consumer
goods to Russians that were becoming ubiquitous in the US to the quixotic and disastrous
anti-alcohol policies of Gorbachev that would contribute to his unpopularity in
the Soviet Union and its ultimate demise.

Stalin looms large over proceedings in Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking and I find it interesting that,
no matter from what angle one views the Soviet Union, the vozhd becomes the dominant presence, even more so that Lenin
himself. One of my favourite stories in
the book is of Stalin sending his faithful sidekick Anastas Mikoyan to the US
to investigate what the American s are eating and how he comes back to
introduce the hamburger (sans bun) and ice cream to the Soviet people. It’s an almost picaresque story that I found
reminiscent of the episode in Adam Johnson’s The Orphan Master’s Son where a North Korean delegation makes a
trip to meet a US senator at this ranch in Texas. The story itself is good but, as with all the
stories in Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking,
Von Bremzen tells it well.

Since her move to America, von Bremzen has carved out a
successful career as a food writer and has won two James Beard awards for
previous books. She deserves to win
further accolades for this one.

I’d like to thank Crown Publishers for sending me a review
copy of Mastering the Art of Soviet
Cooking.

Thursday, September 5, 2013

The Gilded Edge is
Danny Miller’s second novel featuring Metropolitan Police detective Vince
Treadwell but the first I’ve read. In
truth, I probably would never have come across it but for its publisher,
Constable & Robinson kindly sending me a review copy, for which I’m
terribly grateful, both for the fact that I enjoy receiving books for review
and for the fact that it’s simply an excellent crime novel.

Set in pre-summer of love (but after the year sex began
according to Larkin), events in The
Gilded Edge take place in a London that is dark, edgy and bubbling with
social revolution. Two separate murders
take place on the same night but in very different circumstances. Jonny Beresford, aristocrat, investment
banker and socialite gambler, has been found shot in the basement of his
Belgravia residence, surrounded by empty champagne and hash. A few miles away, in downmarket Notting Hill,
a black nurse is found in the hall of her block of flats with the back of her
head bashed in by a frenzied hammer attack and her young daughter hiding under
a bed upstairs.

Although the murders initially seem unconnected, Vince’s
investigations begin to uncover connections between the two and, defying
pressure from his bosses, he starts digging into the affairs of a group of
wealthy and connected members of the Montcler Club, a Mayfair gaming club and,
in parallel, the affairs of a Jamaican gang and its boss, a wannabe Malcolm X.

As well as being tightly plotted and peopled with vivid yet believable
characters, Miller’s strength lies in his descriptive ability - the violence
feels real, the brothels seedy and his sense of place and time is immaculate. I’ve thought for a long time that there are
certain authors who can convey a true sense of understanding and feeling for a
specific place and, when it comes to London Miller seems to be one of those
writers - like Dickens, China Miéville, Christopher Fowler and Peter
Ackroyd. The Gilded Edge simply oozes with London atmosphere.

Miller’s version of ‘60s London is a wonderful swirling
kaleidoscope of violence, sleaze, corruption and poverty contrasting with
wealth, sophistication, colour and the explosion of creativity and hedonism
that marked the birth of the Swinging Sixties.
We meet the aristocrats “roughing it” for fun, the working class looking
to move on up, the West Indian immigrants adopting a political consciousness
from the USA, the Soho and East London gangsters and the grand clash and
cross-fertilisation of British sub-cultures that came about from the breakdown of
traditional boundaries. Miller does
brilliant job of capturing all of this, resulting in a densely packed novel.

Vince Treadwell, Miler’s hero, is one of those working class
young men on the rise. He wears sharp
suits, mixes happily with the toffs, is a bit “handy” and has a moderately rebellious
and independent streak about him. All of
this makes him an appealing and interesting protagonist, especially when the narration
is as sardonic and blunt as Miller’s.

Miller clearly has a real knowledge of the period and uses
this liberally in the book. In particular,
the Montcler Club and some of the central characters in the book are closely
based on the Clermont Club (do you see what he did there?), notorious for
having Lord Lucan as one of its leading lights.
Lucky himself is one of the main characters in The Gilded Edge and Miller doesn’t paint a pretty picture of
him. Another of the characters, Jimmy
Asper is a clear analogue for John Aspinall, the owner of the Clermont, right
down to the interest in wildlife and the private zoo. The late Lord Goldsmith also has a starring
role as financier Simon Goldsachs (spot the double play on words in his
surname). Although spotting the references
was fun, the thinness of some of the disguises began to get a little in the way
of the plot. This is a minor gripe,
however, and I loved the cameo roles Miller gave to people like Brian Jones and
Billy Hill.

Although it’s not perfect (there’s a couple of minor
anachronisms), this is a damn fine thriller that deserves to sell by the
bucketful (and, frankly, is screaming out to be made into a film by Guy Ritchie!).

Sunday, September 1, 2013

Well, we’re now at the end of my fifty favourite childhood
books and thank you very much if you’ve persevered with me over the course of
these five posts. The Falaise family
arrived back from our French sojourn on Friday night and, once mini-Falaise’s
birthday and first day of school are done with next week, we’ll be saying
farewell to what has been a pretty fine summer and looking forward to the joys
of autumn and winter – Hallowe’en, Bonfire Night and then Christmas. All of which should mean I’ll be able to post
more frequently and regularly from now on – and maybe even catch up with some
of my massive backlog of reviews.

Anyway, back to the task in hand……..here are numbers 41-50
in my list.

41. The Long Walk by Slawomir Rawicz. Like a couple of others on this list,
this isn’t exactly a children’s book
but it does seem to be a book that children enjoy – indeed, when we were
looking around a prospective school for mini-Falaise last year, the headmaster
was just starting to read it with some of the pupils. It’s the story of how the author, a Polish
army lieutenant, had escaped from a Soviet POW camp in 1941 and escaped to
India across the Gobi desert. I loved
this book as a child and I hate to have to break this to anyone else who loved
it that, according to Soviet archival material, the story is untrue.

42. The Wooden Horse by Eric Williams. Apart from the fact that this story is
indubitably true, this book falls into the same category as The Long Walk and tells the story of the
Allied escape attempt from Stalag Luft III in WWII, using a tunnel dug under a
wooden gym horse. It’s exciting stuff.

43. The Dribblesome Teapot and Other
Incredible Stories by Norman
Hunter. I’d quite forgotten about
this until I did some internet memory-jogging for this list. It’s basically a collection of ten pretty
eccentric tales with kings and queens and countries called things like Kumdown
Upwardz and Urgburg under Ug and it’s great fun.

44. Carrie’s War by Nina Bawden. This is a classic children’s novel about
Carrie, a young girl evacuated to Wales with her brother in WWII and the
strange families they end up living with.
It’s really quite dark and mysterious.

45. The Once and Future King by T.H. White.
One of the great retellings of the story of King Arthur. I recall that I much preferred the Sword in the Stone, the first of the
four books that make up this cycle.

46. The Adventures of Robin Hood by
either Richard Green or Roger Lancelyn Green. I can’t remember the author of my childhood
copy of this and the internet credits both Greens with having written a version
so I’ll hedge my bets. In any event, the
Robin Hood story remains a classic and I lapped it up as a child.

47. Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf by
Catherine Storr. In writing this list, I’ve been

intrigued
that so many of the books I read in the ‘70s and very early ‘80s had actually
been written decades previously – and not just the obvious ‘classics’. This collection of stories was written in the
‘50s and remains fresh today. I’m
looking forward to reading this one with mini-Falaise soon.

48. Asterix and the Olympic Games by Goscinny and Uderzo. I was in two minds whether to include this as
I’m a huge Asterix (and Tintin) fan and get irrationally annoyed when they are
dismissed as children’s comic strips because the humour is so clever. Anyway, as a child, my parents disapproved of
comics and so I wasn’t allowed Asterix.
But, one day, my mother and I were in WH Smith in Stevenage (I led a
glamorous life) and I saw this in a black and white paperback novel-sized
format. I showed to Mama Falaise who,
failing to inspect the inside of the book, assumed it was a written version of
Asterix and allowed me to buy it.
Result! How I cherished that book. The coda to this is that, later, my parents
relented and finally allowed me to buy Asterix………in French.

49. Chikdren’s versions of the Odyssey and
Iliad. I don’t know who adapted the
Originals but I had abridged and adapted versions of both these and absolutely
loved them. As with Roger Lancelyn Green’s
books, they instilled a love for myth and legend that persists today and probably
also contributed to my enjoyment of fantasy and even sci-fi. It also proved a precursor for my education
as I ended up reading both in the original Greek as part of my Greek A-level
work.

50. A Book Whose Name I’ve Forgotten. The plot of this book revolves around a
schoolboy who discovers that there is a secret criminal society made up of some
of the girls in his school and that only he can save the school from them. It was a great book that I borrowed from the
local library many times. The thing is
that I can’t remember either the title or the author and, try as I might, I can’t
track them down on line. If anyone
recognises this, please, please let me know as it is really bugging me.

And there we have it – my 50 favourite childhood books. I’m sure I’ve left out loads that I’ve
forgotten and that I’ll probably remember as soon as I press the publish button
but it’s a pretty solid list and I’ve enjoyed the trip down memory lane while
writing these posts.

About Me

Lawyer, husband, father, voracious reader. During a mild bout of mid-life angst, I found out that, based on life expectancy of a British male and my average reading speed, I have only 2,606 more books to read before I expire. So I'm going to count them down and write about them.
As part of this plan, I intend to read the 1,001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, using the 2008 edition as my base.